Disaster recovery plans - How do you deal?

As we all know, when something goes wrong, we know what to do, right? RIGHT?!?! Well, over the years, I have seen some bad recovery plans. Some of them setup asking people in the corporation to keep a backup with them, or backup to their personal computers, so in case something happens to the server, they can ask the employees for the data. I can spot a MAJOR Flaw in this.

Others rest the hopes that if something goes wrong, they go to the lowest bid recovery corporation and see if they can recover the data. I have seen two counts of this.

The smart ones actually backup in as many offsite locations as they can, so they don't have to worry about regional disasters.

I have been called into some 10-20 people corporations when data on one of their machines gets screwed up or corrupted, and end up charging about $500 per computers to get back their stuff, and really only have a success rate of maybe 35% because of how corrupted it is.

The interesting thing that still intrigues me, is that some of them almost NEVER learn. or if they do, it's too late. Usually after a small data loss, then a HUGE data loss, which they could have prevented.

The company my dad works for, in it's early days would have about 40 servers in the office with some REALLY expensive contract work on it. Stuff that is about maybe $30k per project's worth of data. They would keep the servers in a hot room, and would have failures all the time. The sad thing is, the company was too cheap to even get SOME KIND of backup. They kept putting in requests for Tape drives and etc... and the company denied it because the company doesn't see the need for "Fancy experimental computer solutions". They seemed to think of data backup as "Experimental" procedure.

Usually it turned into this:

This is NOT what you want to see. it took the company about 10 years, and over $1mil worth of data loss at one time (server room had a fire, and then was destroyed when the Firemen came in and pretty much Axed every computer to pieces to get the fire put out), that then they actually invested in some reliable Backup.

Now they have a central location.

The point is that i am getting to, is that EVERYONE that has data, and that data is worth protecting. It doesn't matter if it's pictures or word documents, or if it's corporate or Home backup, EVERYONE needs to have a backup and recovery solution

I, myself use a number of backup solutions. Some are free (like PC Inspector Line of products or spinrite which I have just discovered, or down to norton's utilities, which seem to work wonders for data recovery (but not for anything else!!!))
I generally keep the backups that I use on a RAID machine, as well as REALLY important data for my stuff is backed up onto pretty much EVERY spare hard drive I have in the household. My data altogether myself only comes to about 20GB MAX. however, my client's data (they pay me a monthly fee to hold data in case they lose theirs in some way and need it back (more of rental space, not expensive) is stored on a RAID-5 config, on a spare machine, as well as physical backups to Optical disc are made (stored in a cool dry location) and copies are even made at my Bank Deposit box (got one specifically for data storage. probably over 100 DVDs of data, all indexed on a CD-RW (also there))

I want to know what YOU guys do for backups and recovery plans? it would help all of us here if we all knew a bit more about how to protect data.

I created this thread, so if ANYONE needs data recovered on this forum, they have this to refer to. I meant this also so *I* can learn more tips or the trade.

however, my client's data (they pay me a monthly fee to hold data in case they lose theirs in some way and need it back (more of rental space, not expensive) is stored on a RAID-5 config, on a spare machine, as well as physical backups to Optical disc are made (stored in a cool dry location) and copies are even made at my Bank Deposit box (got one specifically for data storage. probably over 100 DVDs of data, all indexed on a CD-RW (also there))

well, as for me, I have about 90gb of data, and most of it is critical. I have it all stored on my 120gb HD, which is just a little over 1 year old. I also store bits and pieces of it on smaller spare hard drives, and leave them unplugged for safety. There are other bits burned on 2 year old CD-Rs that I store in a cool dry place, but I should probably re-burn them.

I have been thinking of investing in a firewire or USB hard drive enclosure, or a NAS, or something with a RAID. I have been thinking of getting an old cheap PC and turn it into a server with a RAID. Or do the me thing and get a Beige G3 and set that up as a server.

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